Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCXXIII

[BrilloPad]

Winning The Lottery With Nicolas Cage[/URL] - Ed Jefferson has a surefire system for winning the lottery: ”Watching every screen appearance of Nicolas Cage, in order, could constitute a ritualistic act of magic with the power to affect the fabric of reality… I will watch every screen appearance of Nicolas Cage. After each viewing, I will enter the next main UK National Lottery draw, choosing numbers inspired by the latest instalment of Cage. And if I am right, I will win. Eventually.” And he also gets to write a review of each of Cage’s performances; he’s currently up to Time to Kill (1989).

Better than the one the guy at JP Morgan chose. He threw himself off the roof. He was convinced he would wake up in another universe where he had won the lottery.

[NickFitz]

Ooh! Bonus linky! The OZ archive has inspired this piece by Rob Baker about the obscenity trial: The Indecency Trial That Destroyed Iconic Zine 'OZ' and Got a Cop Thrown in Jail

[NickFitz]

Loved the American Gospel one. You just couldn't make that one up.

They definitely had the right spirit

[NickFitz]

Here's another child star who had his fortune squandered:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Coogan

"No promises were ever made to give Jackie anything" - his mother, having blown his money on furs, diamonds, and cars. FFS

[NickFitz]

Two more weeks of winter to go! Plenty of time for staying in your bunker and reading

• The Last Living Silent Star: Child Actress Baby Peggy Made the Equivalent of $14M a Movie and Lost It All - "Ninety years ago, Hollywood's "Million Dollar Baby" was a beloved star earning seven figures. But her career was over at age 6, and her family then squandered her fortune." An interview with now 97-year-old Peggy-Jean Montgomery.
  
  
• The Man Who Turned Night Into Day - A strange Russian project from the 1990s: ”By shining a giant mirror onto the earth from space, they figured they could bring sunlight to the depths of night, extending the workday, cutting back on lighting costs and allowing laborers to toil longer. If this sounds a bit like the plot of a Bond film, well, it’s that too.”
  
  
• Last Men Standing - A look at the gay men who survived HIV infection in San Francisco in the 1980s: ”For many, time stopped when they were diagnosed. They let go of futures they had no reason to believe would ever arrive… In the throes of a plague, no one thought about those who would live.”
  
  
• OZ magazine - The University of Wollongong (a real place in Australia, not a silly name from Monty Python) has scanned every edition of the countercultural magazine so you can now read them all, including the infamous School Kids Issue that led to the famous obscenity trial. NSFW, unless your client is OK with Rupert Bear’s penis: ”This collection has been made available due to its historical and research importance. It contains explicit language and images that reflect attitudes of the era in which the material was originally published, and that some viewers may find confronting.” LATE NEWS: inspired by this archive, Vice has an article about the trial
  
  
• Holiday at the Dictator’s Guesthouse - In 2014, Jeffrey Fowle smuggled a Bible into North Korea. This ended up going about as well as you might expect: ”Foreign missionaries working inside North Korea have faced detainment, imprisonment, and execution, yet Fowle apologized for his actions with a smirk hiding in the corner of his mouth. He looked like a man interviewing for a job, not pleading for his freedom. I didn’t know what to make of his easy manner. Confidence, naivety, and insanity all seemed like possibilities.”
  
  
• How Mark Twain’s ghost almost set off the copyright battle of the century - "Early rumors of his death may have been grossly exaggerated, but eventually death did come for Mark Twain. For most authors, that moment—that is, the moment of death—is a natural time to stop writing. But in 1917, seven years after Twain’s demise, reports emerged that he had dictated a new novel, via Ouija board, to a receptive medium." But was he still under contract?
  
  
• This American Gospel: Our Motorcycles, Our Morphine, Our Lives in Death - Extract from an interview with Mike DeStefano in which he describes taking his terminally ill wife Fran for a spin on his new Harley: ”So now she wants to see [the Harley]. I take her out; she wants to sit on it. I put her on it. She wants to start it up. Now she’s wearing a paper dress, she’s got her freakin’ morphine pole next to her, and she’s sitting on this Harley, and I’m worried about her burning her freakin’ leg off. So she says (pleading voice), ‘Can you just take me for a little ride around the parking lot?’”
  
  
• Meet the 63-Year-Old in Charge of Approving New Emojis - As president of the Unicode Consortium, Mark Davis is of course responsible for a lot more than emoji, but they’re the character sets that capture the public imagination: ”It’s the Unicode Consortium’s newfound influence over the visual language of the Web that earned Davis the nickname “shadowy emoji overlord”—and he has the T-Shirt to prove it.”
  
  
• Winning The Lottery With Nicolas Cage - Ed Jefferson has a surefire system for winning the lottery: ”Watching every screen appearance of Nicolas Cage, in order, could constitute a ritualistic act of magic with the power to affect the fabric of reality… I will watch every screen appearance of Nicolas Cage. After each viewing, I will enter the next main UK National Lottery draw, choosing numbers inspired by the latest instalment of Cage. And if I am right, I will win. Eventually.” And he also gets to write a review of each of Cage’s performances; he’s currently up to Time to Kill (1989).
  
  
• A different substance and a new painting every day for 20 days - Artist Josh Davis created 20 paintings in 20 days, each one reflecting his experience of a different drug: ”After 20 Days of different psychonautics, I had compromised my sanity, my finances, and my reputation, though I found the answers to my questions. I have found that my use of psychedelics over the years has changed my core being. I am perpetually in awe at the beauty which surrounds us, so uncontrollable yet based on our decisions to experience. Psychedelics have helped me place my self into another’s perspective. I am far more empathetic.”
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!